"I have to warn you, it's not just modeling," she said. Wow, I thought, stretching all five-foot-two of me. I look like a prospective model? Now this is new. "He wants you to sell things out of a cigar tray."

"You remember John, don't you?" Of course I did. How could I forget the man my grandmother referred to as "salt of the earth," who had been my uncle's best friend for 40 years—and who was now a successful Hollywood producer.

"I simply cannot figure out where to place you," he says. He then speaks words that continue to haunt me: "You're like a young face with an old soul." I stare at him blankly. What am I supposed to make of that?

I slowly realize my whole life is about acting. Every day is 24/7 auditioning, acting class, new headshots, meeting with 'producers'—and waiting tables to pay for all of it. What happened to 'my life'?

She bats her perfectly mascara'd eyelashes, as if she'd been planning this moment her whole life. She then asks my boyfriend for his autograph. Great. Models are fighting over my boyfriend. Right in between the cookbooks and self-help.

I finally drummed up the courage to ask him what I really wanted to know: Why he had cast me out of all the dozens of young women he'd seen at the casting calls. "Because you were the only one who trusted yourself in the audition," he said.